


Darcy Didn’t Intend to Stick to the Route

by YouCanJive



Series: Time is the Longest Distance (Between Two Places) [6]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Darcy trusts everyone, Gen, Mentions of Cancer, Protective Tony Stark, Road Trips, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Tony worries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-03 16:32:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 13,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19467820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouCanJive/pseuds/YouCanJive
Summary: Against all odds, Darcy convinces Tony to join her on a cross-country road trip to help her move into college.





	1. The Route

Darcy still wasn’t sure how she’d convinced her parents to let her drive to Virginia with Tony.

She also wasn’t too sure how she’d convinced Tony to _drive_ to Culver with her. He was as impatient as a toddler and week-long roadtrips were not generally his style.

When Darcy had first brought up the idea, he’d instantly offered to fly her and her parents out in a private jet. When Darcy had pointed out she wanted to take her car along, he’d offered to pay to ship it.

But Darcy wanted to roadtrip. More importantly, she wanted to roadtrip _with Tony_.

She’d teamed up with JARVIS and come up with a list of things to see and do along the way. She promised she would let him choose the music.

How was Tony supposed to say no to that?

There’d been a bit of drama with Pepper, since she still didn’t know anything about Darcy beyond the fact that she’d been a sick kid Tony had met at the hospital once, that they’d kept in touch, and that, unlikely as it seemed, they were friends, so Pepper was supposed to help her out or put her through to Tony if she ever called.

Tony could hardly tell Pepper he was taking a week off to drive across the country to help Darcy move into her freshman dorm. Not that she would have been likely to believe him he’d told her.

Instead, Tony told her some purposefully vague story about an important fact-finding mission for some new project and had let her come to the conclusion that he was blowing her and his obligations off for a few days. He felt a bit bad about lying to her – he liked to think they were getting close. But Darcy’s place in his life was his most closely guarded secret, and Tony wanted to keep it that way. He liked sharing something with Darcy that he didn’t have to share with anybody else. Besides, it was for her protection for nobody to know who she was to him. 

And maybe a small part of Tony didn’t want to tell Pepper because, though he would never admit it, he didn’t want her to look at him differently. 

Because he had a soulmate 19 years his junior. 

(Because he had a soulmate at all.)

According to JARVIS, the trip from Bonners Ferry to Culver University should take roughly 37 hours. Just about a week, if they drove between six and seven hours a day and they stuck to the carefully-planned route he had plotted for them.

Darcy didn’t intend to stick to the route.


	2. Day 1

**Bonners Ferry, ID to Big Sky, MT (7 hours and 30 minutes of road time)**

Darcy’s mom gave Tony one final lecture about responsibility and respectability and Darcy arriving safe and sound, while Darcy’s dad helped pack the sandwiches, drinks, and snacks somewhere they'd be easily accessible from the front seat.

Beatrice and Chuck would be flying out to Richmond in a week, renting a car, and meeting Tony and Darcy at Culver to help her move into her dorm. In the meantime, Darcy and Tony would be driving across the continent.

Darcy was beyond excited. Tony was starting to get excited, too, even if he was putting up a front of silent suffering. (As if Darcy couldn't see right through it.)

Tony lifted the hood of the car and he and Darcy looked through the motor and made sure everything was in order.

Then, a few hugs, kisses, and reminders to call to check in later, Tony and Darcy were on the road.

JARVIS had plotted out a couple route options for their trip, but after a look at it, at her road map, and at a few select websites, Darcy had made a few tweaks.

They’d just crossed into Montana when Tony caught sight of their final destination on the GPS screen he'd tweaked and hooked JARVIS up to.

“Big Sky? You’re telling me there’s actually a place called ‘Big Sky’ out there? You rural people are so full of yourselves. Your sky is not bigger than ours. _It’s the same damn sky._ ”

Darcy didn’t know if there was a term for his tone, a mix between surprised, aghast, judgmental, and thrilled. Tony sounded like that often, and when she wanted to channel or imitate him she always started out with a similar expression of outrage/delight.

(Darcy did a _great_ Tony Stark. It killed at her school talent show.)

“Nope!” Darcy replied, popping the ‘p.’ “It's totally different out here. And I’m surprised you've never heard of Big Sky. They’re supposed to have some great ski and golf resorts.”

“ _Please_ ,” Tony returned, “you know I only golf in Melbourne,” and he sounded so snooty but so serious that Darcy could not tell if he was joking or not.

Three hours into the drive, after they’d sung their way through the full Wicked soundtrack (and if Tony got a little weepy during “No Good Deed,” Darcy was certainly not going to judge him) and a lunch stop, they decided they might need some additional entertainment.

“Sir,” JARVIS pitched in, “Miss Lewis’ and my research shows that frequent road trip entertainment includes license plate bingo, scavenger hunts, and a game of guessing entitled ‘I spy’.”

“I think it’s a little early in the week for ‘I Spy,’ J.”

“But not for a scavenger hunt!" And good god, how did Darcy still have so much energy? "Come on, the beginning of the trip is the perfect time to come up with the list. Think of how many things we might miss otherwise!”

Tony grumbled good-naturedly, but inside his competitive hackles had raised. Darcy was driving today, so he was playing with an advantage that was bound to give him a good head start.

“JARVIS, will you keep track of the list and the points for us, please?” Darcy asked, not trusting herself to remember everything and not trusting Tony not to cheat.

“Certainly, Miss Lewis. I’m ready for the list whenever you are.”

“Ok, let’s start it small. 1 point for every other Idaho plate we see? Oh, and for any car twins!”

“Do those have to be the same color and same year as yours, Miss Lewis, or simply the same brand and make?”

“Hmm… let’s say one point for the same brand and make, three points for the same color or year, 5 for our long lost identical twin. Sound fair, Tony?”

“Fair, sure. But kind of like small potatoes. How about 10 for every vanity plate?”

“10 seems a bit much for that. Let’s make that 5. Let’s do 10 for… any sign for a town starting with the letter W.”

“Noted,” confirmed JARVIS.

“Awesome. Because there’s a sign for Wye!” Darcy exclaimed. “10 points for me. Darcy for the win!”

“Wait, that’s cheating!”

“JARVIS accepted it! It’s not my fault you’re not wearing your glasses, old man.”

“Is that how we’re playing it, kid? JARVIS, 10 points for a billboard with food on it.” Tony paused long enough for JARVIS to confirm. “There’s one with a big old burger and, oh look, is that a sign for _West Riverside_? Twenty points for me. Stark in the lead.”

“That doesn’t even count! It’s _Bonner_ -West Riverside! JARVIS!”

“I’m afraid Miss Lewis is correct, Sir. You remain tied 10-10.”

Darcy glanced away from the road just long enough to stick her tongue out at Tony. “Ha. Suck it, old man.”

They arrived at Big Sky around 5:40pm.

To Tony’s consternation, Darcy stopped in the center of the small settlement only long enough for them to use the bathroom, refill their water bottles, and load up on some more snacks, and for Darcy to have a furtive conversation in hushed tones with the clerk at the general store.

Then Darcy ushered him back into the car and drove them back out to what looked like an open field.

Before Tony had a chance to ask what was about to happen (not that he needed to. He was a smart guy. He had multiple PhDs. He _knew_ what was about to happen, much to his chagrin), Darcy had already parked, jumped out of the car, and thrown the trunk open. When she came back around to the front of the car, she was clearly holding the makings of a tent.

“No. No way. I own a house. I own _multiple_ houses, each of them with multiple beds. I’m not sleeping outside, on the floor, like some... some homeless person.”

“You know, I’m pretty sure when you’re outdoors it’s called the ground, city slicker,” Darcy quipped.

“Shut up. I don’t care. Put that ridiculous thing back in the car. I’m sure JARVIS can find us a hotel for the night.”

“Please?” Darcy asked, and her face was the picture of innocence. “There’s supposed to be a meteor shower tonight and Marvin at the store said this is the _best_ spot for stargazing.”

A few hours later, laying side by side with Darcy on the blanket she had packed precisely for this purpose and looking up at the Perseids, Tony had to admit maybe Darcy had the right of it about this whole road trip thing.


	3. Day 2

**Big Sky, MT to Worland, WY (5 hours and 33 minutes of road time)**

Tony and Darcy had gone to sleep as far apart as they could while still in Darcy’s little tent, and still somehow Tony had woken up halfway through the night suffocating under a mass of wild, brown curls. He rolled back to his original spot and made a mental note to tease Darcy about it in the morning.

But it turns out there were worse things than waking up with a mouthful of Darcy’s hair, and that was waking up and Darcy not being there.

Any hopes of a slow morning and maybe getting a few more z’s before another long day on the road were dashed the moment Tony opened his eyes and caught sight of the empty spot where Darcy should have been.

Tony was instantly wide awake and full of adrenaline.

(He might have broken the tent in trying to get out of it. He wasn’t sure. The little clasp for the zipper had been resisting him and he had needed _out._ )

His panic only spiked when he caught sight of Darcy, sitting on the bed of a rusty old pickup truck, swinging her legs off the edge seemingly without a care in the world, and speaking with a couple men who had to be at least 20 years her senior and twice her size.

As if she had some sort of Tony radar, Darcy turned to look in his direction as soon as he emerged from the tent. She waved him over with a smile.

The two men turned to look at him, and as soon as they saw him the air of relaxation around them vanished. The one who’d been sitting by Darcy on the truck bed stood up and went to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with his friend. The two synchronously crossed their arms across their chests.

Without any regard for his doubtlessly rumpled and disheveled state, Tony stood up straight and walked over with his most confident and intimidating stance. The two men looked unimpressed.

“Hey, Tony!” Darcy greeted cheerfully, and in the back of his mind Tony noted how strange it was to hear her call him that.

“Hey, kid,” he greeted, not wanting to give the two goons any more information than he absolutely had to. He purposefully stepped around the two men to walk right up to Darcy, ignoring their glares but never turning his back on them. “You doing ok?”

“Yup!” she responded, ever chipper. “Eli and Sam were just telling me where we should go to get the most of our Yellowstone stop today. They go out there all the time.”

“Do they, now. Well, that’s nice, but we should let them get going now. We need to pack up and get on the road.”

He held his hand out to help Darcy down from the back of the truck. Darcy looked puzzled by his curt demeanor, but she took his hand and hopped down. When he took a half step forward, positioning himself between her and the two men, Darcy fisted a hand in the back of his shirt. “Tony?” she asked, her voice uncertain.

“Everything ok, Darcy?” asked one of the men, and Tony bit back a growl. He had no business trying to go between them, saying her name like that (because of course she had told them her name).

“It’s fine, Sam,” she said, but she sounded like she was only half listening to him. Meanwhile, Tony’s attention was fully fixed on the two men.

“How’d you say the two of you knew each other?” the other man asked, looking between Tony and Darcy with open suspicion.

“Family friends,” Tony spat back before Darcy had a chance to open her mouth.

The men exchanged a look, the tension clear on their faces. “Is that true, Darcy?”

“Yes,” Darcy replied quickly, unsure what was happening between the three men, but backing Tony without a thought. “He’s a family friend. And I guess we should get on the road soon. It’s probably later than I thought. Thanks for the advice.”

“No problem, Darcy,” replied one of them (Sam?), his gaze soft when he looked at Darcy, then turning cold and calculating when it returned to Tony. “You got a nice ride there,” he continued, his eyes pointedly resting on their license plate for a few seconds. “I’ll call my Ranger friends over at Yosemite, let them know to keep an eye out for you today.”

After Tony and Darcy had walked back a few yards, almost back to their tent, the other man called out, “Hey, Darcy, you dropped your phone.” He jogged over to give it to her, but Tony intercepted him, taking the phone himself.

“Great. Bye.”

The men got back in their truck, gave the two of them another long, calculating look, then finally drove away. Only then did Tony feel like he could breathe again.

Back in the car and on the road, Tony’s hands kept clenching and unclenching around the steering wheel.

The adrenaline rush had passed and now he was angry.

Angry at the fact that he had to have this talk with her now. At the fact that the talk was necessary at all. (He wished Darcy lived in a world where she never had to worry about such things.)

Angry at Darcy, for putting herself in that situation. She was just so fucking _young_.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he finally asked.

“Me?” Darcy looked stunned. “What about you? You were so rude to Sam and Eli.”

“ _You were so rude to Sam and Eli_ ,” he mocked back. “Christ, Darcy, they could have hurt you.”

“They were just trying to help! They saw me and the car and the tent and they thought I was a runaway or homeless or something. I know this is all new to you, but people in small communities like these like to help each other out.”

“Yes, and predators in small communities like these would also love to find a pretty little girl, all on her own in the middle of nowhere, who they thought nobody might realize was missing for days,” he shot back.

“Predators?! I think you’ve been watching a little too much late night TV, Mr. Stark.” And Tony _knew_ she’d only used his first name before because they wanted to keep her name off the papers, keep their relationship off the public eye, and his name was too distinctive. But it still smarted, hearing her revert back to calling him Mr. Stark.

“No, Darcy. You grew up in a tiny town, and everybody knew everybody else, and I know that gave you the impression that the world is just one happy family. But it’s not. There are bad people out there, and they look just like the good ones, ok? You can’t… I know you like to believe the best of everyone, but you’re too trusting. You’ll end up hurt,” Tony tried to explain.

“I’m not a child, Mr. Stark,” Darcy retorted, and she was clearly angry now. “I’m not stupid and you don’t have to warn me about ‘stranger danger’. But I was _fine_. We were just talking, you were just a few feet away, and _nothing was going to happen._ ”

“You don’t know that! For fuck’s sake, Darcy, _you got into their car._ They wouldn’t have even had to knock you out, you’d probably have just gone along if they said they needed help moving something back home.”

The image of a helpless Darcy, held down by one of the two men’s massive arms while she struggled to get away, had crossed through Tony’s mind too many times so far that morning.

“You’re being ridiculous. I didn’t get into their car, I was sitting on the trunk! Next time we’ll just stay by the tent and wake you.”

“Yes, Darcy! That’s precisely what you should do when strangers approach you like that! Make noise and attract attention and _fucking yell for me._ I can’t believe I have to tell you that. Do you know what could have happened to you?”

Darcy looked like she wanted to cry. Under different conditions, Tony might have felt bad, but he needed her to understand. To know how serious this was.

“I was so scared, Darcy. They could have taken you. They could have hurt you. They could have done anything they wanted to you, and I wouldn’t know. I’d just be fucking asleep in that fucking tent while they…” He stopped. Took a deep breath. Counted to ten. “The world is a really ugly place, Darce. I’m sorry, but it is. Especially to young women. Especially if anybody ever finds out what you mean to me. You have to be aware and you need to be able to protect yourself. I’m sorry. I’m _so_ sorry. I really wish it weren't like that. But it _is_.”

Darcy was crying now.

“Sam and Eli might be good, kind people. Maybe they really were trying to help. But you don’t _know_ that, Darcy. And you can’t take the chance. Do you understand?”

A tear had rolled all the way down to the tip of Darcy’s nose. When she nodded, it dropped somewhere onto her lap.

In the end, they didn’t stop at Yellowstone.

Hours later, though, when Darcy caught sight of a sign for the Museum of Flight and Aerial Firefighting, she insisted they stop.

Darcy held his hand through the whole exhibit.

(It took a couple days for Darcy to notice the new addition to her contacts list. Under the name Eli and a number with a Montana area code, in the “notes” section, it read: _Call if you’re in trouble_. Darcy didn’t show Tony.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy 4th of July to all my American readers!  
> What do you plan to rebel against this year?


	4. Day 3

**Worland, WY to Wall, SD (6 hours and 21 minutes of road time)**

Tony didn’t even try hold back his eyeroll when he spotted Darcy in the dining area of the B&B where they had spent the night.

“Kid, I’ve met your family, I’ve seen where you live, I’ve slept on the ground for you… I’m not going to forget you’re a farm girl who laughs in the face of us city slickers if you cool it on the _hick chic_.”

Darcy squeaked with indignation, crossing her arms across her red-plaid-clad torso before stomping a worn brown leather boot on the ground. At least she wasn’t wearing her cowboy boots today.

“For your information,” Darcy defended herself primly, “these clothes are _comfortable_ , both for sitting in the car and for the bit of hiking we’ll hopefully be doing when we stop by Mount Rushmore today.”

“You know you can’t climb all over the good presidents, right, Annie Oakley?” Tony asked as he poured himself a cup of coffee. He held the pot out to Darcy in a silent question, and after a second of contemplation she held out her mug for him to fill it.

She’d never really drunk much coffee back home, but Tony seemed to love the stuff, and, if the movies were to be believed, college students’ veins were generally filled with more coffee than blood, anyway. She might as well start getting used to it. (She made a face after her first taste, then added milk and four little sugar packages before she was satisfied again.)

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Stark. But I’m also capable of _research_ and know that there’s a short trail you can take and get a closer view. It’ll be fun! And we’ll want to stretch our legs after five hours on the road, anyway.”

Darcy graciously ignored Tony’s continued grumblings about _country bumpkins_ and _death by mosquito bites._

(“3 miles to Worland, 10 points for me!”

“That doesn’t count! We were just _in_ Worland!”

“Totally counts. JARVIS, tell him it counts.”

“I’m afraid it does, Sir. Might I suggest a more precise definition of the scavenger hunt rules in the future?”)

(“Alohomora.”

“Bombarda.”

“Crucio.”

“D…diffindo.”

“Expecto Patronum.”

“Fera Verto.”

“Geminio?”

“Hocus Pocus.”

“Ha! That’s not a real spell!”

“Darcy, magic isn’t real. _None of them are real spells._ ”

“Ok, A: why would you say something so cruel and so wrong to me? And B: you’re just saying that because you lost.”

“I did not lose. And how do you know Hocus Pocus isn’t actually a spell? Maybe we just never saw it used in the books!”

“JARVIS!”)

(“How could you possibly need the bathroom again? We _just_ got back on the road!”)

Tony had to admit, the short hike along the Presidential Trail had been nice. Even if there had definitely been too many bugs.

The carved faces were pretty impressive, though. Then Darcy started talking about the desecration of the sacred mountain the Sioux had called Six Grandfathers and it all lost a bit of the charm.

Tony sat back and watched Darcy explain the mistreatment of Native Americans by the US government in general and by the presidents carved into the face of the mountain in particular to a young family who’d overheard her statement to Tony and asked her about it. Her hands were flying all over the place as she spoke. The two young children looked fascinated, while their parents looked more intimidated than anything.

Tony smiled. Darcy was really going to enjoy college.

Then another family reached the viewing point, and their teenage son turned to stare at Tony while his family stared at the carvings. Tony shifted his weight a bit, trying to angle his face away from the inquisitive teen. But the damage had been done.

“Holy fuck, you’re Tony Stark.”

The boy hadn’t even been that loud, but he hadn’t needed to be. His family turned to stare at Tony and, a few feet away, Darcy stumbled over her words.

“Nope. Wrong guy, dude,” Tony answered, trying to make his voice sound deeper than it really was to somehow disguise it.

“You totally are. Dad! Dad, it’s Tony Stark!”

Darcy said a quick bye to the family she’d been speaking with and was by his side in seconds. Tony wished she’d stayed away. There was a reason they were private about the connection between them. Darcy hadn’t done anything to deserve the attention and lack of privacy, let alone the danger, that associating with him would bring her.

But Darcy seemed entirely unconcerned.

“Again, Uncle Matt?” she asked, her voice tinged with humor and just a bit louder than necessary. “This is getting so ridiculous. You should just quit your job, become a Tony Stark impersonator.”

The boy’s dad, who’d pulled out his phone and started walking up towards Tony, suddenly hesitated.

“Yea, this is the third time this week,” Tony replied. He was going to buy Darcy something really nice. (Maybe a taser, came a stray thought, and Tony liked the idea.) “You think it’s the haircut?”

“The haircut? Please, it’s that stupid goatee. I told you your barber was pranking you.” Darcy turned to speak to the boy who’d spotted him. “Doesn’t that goatee make him look like Tony Stark?”

“He doesn’t _look_ like Tony Stark,” the boy insisted, speaking to Darcy as if she were stupid. “He _is_ Tony Stark. I’ve seen him on tv and stuff.”

Tony’s mind whirred, searching for possible courses of action.

He was used to dodging questions, but he rarely ever tried to deflect attention altogether.

Being the center of attention was _how_ he drew attention away from things he didn’t want to talk about, after all. A little sleight of hand, a little misdirection, and nobody notices what your left hand is up to.

But that was hardly going to work here. He could draw their attention to himself, but he could hardly leave without Darcy. As soon as they got into a car together, the internet would start speculating as to the identity of the woman taking in the South Dakota sights with Tony Stark. If they got a single picture of her, or of her license plate, it would be a matter of hours before her identity was out there.

Darcy didn’t seem to need rescuing, though.

“Dude, we don’t live under a rock, we’ve _all_ seen him on tv and stuff. I’m pretty sure I saw him on TMZ last night, at some party in Monaco or something. Which seems a bit more his vacation style than hiking in South Dakota, if you ask me.”

“I saw that, too,” came the unexpected voice of the young mother Darcy had been speaking with earlier. “He’s in the south of France at some boating festival.”

“That’s right,” the boy’s father said finally. “As if Tony Stark would ever even stop somewhere without an alcohol license. Leave the poor man alone, Billy. It’s not his fault his barber’s done him wrong.”

The boy still looked unsure, but he clearly did not want to cross his father. He backed off, but kept glancing back at them.

Tony and Darcy waited a couple minutes so as to not be entirely obvious, then turned around and returned to their car as quickly as possible.

“Hey, JARVIS? Could you keep an eye on the social media print of everyone back at the observation deck over the next couple days?”

“Absolutely, Sir. I’ll be sure to notify you if anything crops up. Would you like me to block any possible hits on the Stark Industries PR team’s usual searches for your name, should anything come up?”

“Good thinking, J. Yes, please. In fact, let’s go ahead and see if we can set up a blind spot on any hits for Tony Stark containing images of or possible references to Darcy. Let’s set up a DDoS if anything comes up for now, while I think on it. Make it a priority 1 subroutine. I’ll take a look at the code tonight.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Darcy didn’t say anything while Tony and JARVIS plotted how best to keep her hidden from the public eye. It was clear to her that, at one point or another, she was going to be publicly linked to Tony. In fact, she kind of hoped she would be. The idea of hiding who she was to Tony and who he was to her, of staying a secret for the rest of her life, didn’t really appeal.

But Tony was clearly spooked. They had talked before about his thoughts on the matter and his experience growing up in the public eye. She could hardly begrudge him his worry. Darcy had no interest in becoming the next Lady Di. Or the next Lindsay Lohan.

Another day, when he was a bit calmer, she’d ask him about when they could stop hiding.

In the meantime, he needed to be distracted, and Darcy knew just the thing.

“How’s your hunger level? There’s a drive-in movie theater near our hotel. I thought we could go grab some drive-thru and catch the 7:30 showing of the new Harry Potter movie.”

“It’s like you read my mind, Eliza Thornberry.”

Beyond the sass, Darcy could recognize the genuine affection in his voice. Tony was not himself if he wasn’t teasing you at least a little, anyway.

“Eliza Thornberry doesn’t even wear flannel,” she sassed back. “You’re thinking of Debbie.”

“Debbie is all cool and grunge. And she’s a rational person who’d prefer not to live in the wild. No, I’m Debbie in this scenario. You’re Eliza.”

“Whatever you say, _big sis._ ”

“I take it back. You’re definitely Darwin.”


	5. Day 4

**Wall, SD to Rochester, MN (7 hours and 16 minutes of road time)**

Tony was still in a thoughtful mood the next morning.

Darcy had nothing against having quiet days. She knew, better than most, that sometimes you just needed to sit with your own thoughts. She was glad Tony didn’t feel the need to put on a show with her, to engage her and crack jokes and smile just a little too wide, like she’d seen him do on TV and even with her parents on a couple occasions.

But Darcy was also exceedingly aware of the fact that, left to his own thoughts and devices, Tony sometimes went to a very, very dark place.

They hadn’t really talked about it before. Just once or twice, in passing really, in the weeks following their promise to tell each other when something was wrong.

Darcy was smart, though. And she hung on to Tony’s every word and action, always wanting to know more about him and his life when he was not with her. So she had picked up on enough of Tony’s self-deprecating jokes, on his self-destructive tendencies, on his repeated statements about his 'selfishness' in getting close to Darcy.

She was happy to let Tony sit with his thoughts while he drove. But she worried.

So she painted her toenails.

She tried to solve her Rubik’s cube.

She pulled out her laptop and sorted her iTunes library, tweaking the roadtrip playlist she had made.

And all along, she worried.

Surprisingly, it was the last item on her list of activities to give Tony space that drew Tony out of his funk.

When she pulled out her shiny new iPod and cord to connect it to her computer and sync her new playlist, Tony snorted.

“I still can’t believe you’re using that thing.”

“My mom bought it for me!” she said defensively, holding the little music player in the cup of her hands and bringing it to her chest with a pout.

“Yea, because she knew it would annoy me. I could get you a StarkPlayer instead. They’re smaller, faster, and _prettier_.”

“My iPod is plenty pretty, thanks.”

“Please. Jobs’ entire ad campaign is based around the _earbuds_ , for crying out loud. You don’t do that unless you recognize your product is ugly as sin.”

“Excuse you, it’s a brilliant campaign. The only way you can get away with not even featuring your product in your ads is when your product is _iconic_.”

“Christ. You know what this would do to SI stock if it ever got out?” He changed his voice to a nasal sort of midatlantic accent, trying to imitate a newscaster: “Tony Stark’s soulmate spotted using an Apple device. Does she not trust her soulmate’s tech?”

“I think you’re being a little dramatic.”

“You won’t be saying that when I go bankrupt because you decided to play hard to get with your music player.”

The drive for the day was practically a straight shot down a single highway. After a while, the crop fields gave way to a seemingly endless field of wildflowers on either side of the road. Darcy was fascinated. Then, she’d spotted a tiny wooden shack painted with red and white stripes on the side of the road. Atop the tiny shack sat a sign advertising _The Best Hand-Churned Ice Cream in the Midwest_ , and so of course they had had to stop.

The ice cream was all gone now, though, and Darcy was sitting on the picnic table, leaning back onto her elbows, with her face turned up towards the sun and the wind whipping her hair around her head. Looking at her, Tony’s heart was so full it might burst.

He had spent a lifetime looking for a home and a family, trying so desperately to build some around him, but just then he thought maybe all he’d ever needed was Darcy.

“Do you think it’s always like this?”

“Hm?” Darcy lifted her sunglasses to rest on top of her head like a tiara and opened her eyes, lifting her head to look at Tony. “What’s always like what?”

“Soulmates,” he responded. “We haven’t really talked a lot about our views on the whole thing, which seems a bit odd. Do you think we’re… you know, like this,” he motioned back and forth between the two of them, as if that were self-explanatory, “because we were fated to be or whatever, because the soulbond makes it like that, or is it just us? Do we define the bond or does it define us?”

Darcy furrowed her brow. She wasn’t used to an introspective Tony. Was this what he’d been thinking about in the car that morning?

She pursed her lips and looked off into the wildflower field across the road from them. Tony waited, recognizing the look of Darcy deep in thought.

“I think it’s us,” she said at last. “I think we’re… ‘like this’,” she quoted back, a smirk on her face, “because that’s what we decided we wanted. You can’t say we haven’t put in our share of work, sweat, and tears into making it work for us.”

Tony hummed in the back of his throat, acknowledging her response but still unsure.

“I don’t know. I don’t think…” he paused and looked away. “I’m a selfish man. I’m not good at this sort of thing. I don’t know if we – if _I_ could have made it work without some sort of soulmate voodoo interference,” he admitted, his voice thick with shame.

Darcy slid off her seat atop the table to sit beside Tony on the bench, turning sideways on it to straddle it and face him head-on.

“You’re the furthest thing from selfish I’ve ever seen,” she asserted. “And I’m not saying that the whole narrative of ‘ _oooh, this is your soulmate, the other half of your soul’_ might not have played a role in your psyche, making you decide it was worth the effort to, you know, open up and put with me. But I know, deep down, that was all you and me. Not some crazy ‘soulmate voodoo interference’.”

Tony tried to imagine himself like this – happy and comfortable and at home – with somebody else. Some other person the universe had decided was the match to his soul. He couldn’t picture it.

Would he have met Darcy if he hadn't worn her words on his skin? Even if he had, would he have spoken with her? Would they still be where they were now, like this, if fate hadn’t pushed them together?

“How can you be so sure?”

Darcy took a deep breath and bit the inside corner of her lip in a move Tony had learned to associate with Darcy’s feeling uncertain. She didn’t know whether to say whatever she was thinking. Tony shifted his weight and nudged her gently with his shoulder. _Come on_ , his eyes said. _You can tell me._

“If we were meant to be, if there were some sort of biological or spiritual soulbond imperative,” she said slowly, as if she were carefully choosing and shaping her every word, “I don’t think you could have just walked away from me at the hospital.”

Tony felt like he’d had the wind knocked out of him.

They’d never spoken about that.

About their words, about her being sick, about their first meeting, yes.

Never about the ten months after that, before Darcy had called him, when they never thought they’d see each other again.

Possible responses dashed through his mind – ( _Way to change the mood, kid_.) ( _I’m sorry._ ) ( _You could have called me sooner_.) ( _I’m so sorry._ ) ( _You’re the one who told me to leave, remember?_ ) ( _I was such a fool._ ) – each to be rejected before he’d even finished thinking them.

Then: “I’m sorry,” but it was Darcy speaking, not him. “That was unfair. And I’m really not trying to… I don’t know, rehash that entire situation. We were both pretty messed up back then. I’m just saying –“ she paused, taking a big breath, considering her next words “– that our soulmarks gave us that moment, and we said _no_. What we did after that – choosing to do something, to become something to each other – that was all us. That’s actually kind of liberating, don’t you think?”

Tony wasn’t so sure. He still remembered the icy feeling of panic, spreading throughout his whole body, when he’d seen the Idaho number flash on his screen, just over two years ago. The dread he’d felt at the thought that Darcy was dead (in the present, Tony’s heart _clenched_ at the thought), even though he barely even knew anything about her.

Tony was a man of science. He did not much trust or like the thought of fate or magic or whatever the trendy term was these days for the unexplainable.

But he knew he’d been in no shape to be a soulmate to a dying little girl back then. He’d been in no shape to be a soulmate to anyone.

Darcy thought they’d defied their soulmarks by going their separate ways, and that they’d come back together of their own free will. And maybe they had.

But maybe fate, their soulbond, whatever it was, had had them meet like they had so that Tony would have to face that terrifying moment of thinking he’d lost Darcy forever. So that, when given a second chance to get to know Darcy, he would grab on to her with both hands, and put all the blood, sweat, and tears Darcy spoke of into never letting go.

Tony was still thinking about it three hours later, when they finally drove into Rochester for the night.


	6. Day 5

**Rochester, MN to Chicago, IL (6 hours and 13 minutes of road time)**

Darcy drove most of the way the next day.

Either Tony was feeling less introspective or he took his co-pilot duties very seriously (unlikely as that seemed), because he was chatting and joking and suggesting things to do along the way the whole time.

Darcy _hollered_ with laughter when he suggested they play Never Have I Ever (“Ok, but does the person who’s _done_ the most or the one who _hasn’t_ who wins? Because that’s totally going to determine how I play this.”)

The game eventually evolved to Two Truths and a Lie.

Then to Truth or Dare, despite JARVIS’ suggestion that that might not be the wisest route. Neither Darcy nor Tony had ever been very good at backing down from a dare.

“If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?”

“Not ‘Hey There Delilah.’ Can we _please_ skip it this time? I thought you said I could pick the music,” Tony whined.

“You get to choose it _when you are driving._ The tunes are the driver’s prerogative. And this is a great song. And you haven’t answered the question.”

“Because it’s a stupid question. I can’t choose just one.”

“Fine. If you could only listen to three songs for the rest of your life, then, what would they be?”

Tony groaned but he laid his head back against the headrest to think.

“Back in Black, by AC/DC. Black Sabbath’s Paranoid. And…” he drifted off, thinking. “And Bowie’s Space Oddity.”

“Huh. Unexpected yet unsurprising.”

“Your turn, Kid. Truth or dare?”

“Let’s go tit for tat. Truth.” She rolled her shoulders, trying to loosen them after hours of driving.

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done and did you get away with it?”

“That’s two questions. Also, ‘worst’ as in ‘lacking morals’ or as in ‘totally against the rules and I would be so grounded’?”

“Let’s go with against the rules this time. But I’m definitely going to circle back to this ‘Darcy Lewis lacks morals’ issue later.”

“Uuuuuh… I stole twenty bucks from the grocery money to buy a computer game once?”

“Seriously?” Tony sounded like he was holding back laughter. “What game?”

Darcy mumbled an answer so quietly Tony didn’t hear her over the music.

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“The Sims. I stole it to buy The Sims.” At that, Tony let the laughter out. Darcy blushed. “I was twelve!”

“That’s adorable. Did you get caught?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, because you’ve definitely exceeded your one question, but yes. It was so dumb. We all shared one computer. They were bound to notice what I was doing and wonder where the game had come from. It was not my best plan.”

“You’re just not cut out for a life of crime.”

“Speaking of which: truth or dare, Mr. Stark? Let’s try to make it interesting.”

“How can I say no to that? Dare away, Darcy-Lou.”

“I dare you to… prank call my mother.”

Tony gasped. “No!”

“Sorry, that’s your dare.”

“But your mom is scary. And she already _hates_ me.”

“I’m sorry, are you saying you’re a chicken?”

“Fuck. J, place the call. From an unlisted number, please.”

When they were closing in on Madison – after passing signs for Windsor (10 points to Tony) and Waunakee (10 to Darcy) – Darcy posed a question.

“So, I have a proposal, but it would probably add about an hour of road time to our day. And let’s say another hour of off-road time.”

“Are you going to make us go hiking again? What is it with you and going for walks in the middle of nowhere? What do you have against civilization?”

“It’s not actually a hike this time,” Darcy promised. “I was just thinking we could take the scenic route and drive along Lake Michigan. And maybe stop for a quick dip? JARVIS helped me find a few spots that are supposed to be good for swimming along our route.”

“You know,” Tony drawled, “I’m pretty sure we can find a hotel with a pool if you fancy a swim.”

“But it’s not the same! Come on, you don’t even have to get in. It just seems like it’d be fun! Embrace the Americana!”

“I didn’t bring a swimsuit,” he retaliated.

“As if that would stop you. I’ve seen plenty of headlines about your love of inappropriate skinny dipping. _And_ I packed a pair of my dad’s swim trucks precisely for this purpose.”

“Fine. But in the meantime, please tell me about the _appropriate_ skinny dipping occasions I’m apparently missing out on.”

Darcy spotted signs for Wales, Wauksha, Wauwatosa, and Whitefish Bay back-to-back within a period of five minutes.

Tony spotted the one for West Allis.

(Darcy had had no idea there would be so many “W” towns along their way, she’d just picked the letter so she could get a point at the time.)

And then they both spotted the water.

“Holy shit.”

And Tony had to agree. It really was like driving up to the ocean. Which begged the question:

“Have you ever been to the ocean?”

“A couple times, but not since I was little,” Darcy admitted, glancing constantly from the road to the water. “Nine, maybe?”

Tony clapped his hands together. “Ok, that’s it, pull over.”

“What? Why?” But she was already signaling, her eyes flitting between the road and her mirrors.

“You clearly want to look at the water. And you’ve been driving all day. I can take over for the last couple hours.”

“Really?” And there were practically stars in her eyes.

“Yes, really. See if you can shift some things around in the back seat, sit back there on the left side. You’ll have a better view.”

Darcy was already out of the car and throwing open the door to the back seat. Tony stepped out of the car and around it to the driver’s seat much more sedately. He couldn’t help his smile at her excitement, though.

Back on the road, Darcy rolled down her window and held her hand out, shifting it to cut through the wind. Her hair flew wildly about her head and her laughter sounded clear as glass, as the water she was staring at.

From the driver’s seat, Tony was struck by the realization that he could no longer see Darcy’s face and reactions to the sights anymore, and he missed them. He knew she was just behind him, but their positions made them feel distant, somehow.

He wondered if this was how Happy felt and resolved to sit up front with him more frequently. He might even start driving himself every once in a while, letting Happy relax.

This trip was reminding him of how much he actually enjoyed driving (though he would hopefully not be doing so over such long distances again for a while). And maybe a little proximity in the car could create some proximity between them personally. Happy was a good guy and Tony was suddenly inclined to trying to make better friends. (He didn’t think too deeply about the reasons for that.)

Hours later, after a lake-side detour, a quick swim, a lengthy water battle, and an extensive game of Two Truths and a Lie, they arrived in Chicago with just enough energy to scarf down some dinner and collapse onto their beds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm in the middle of moving /and/ I almost set my kitchen on fire just a few minutes ago, so I apologize for the slightly shorter post today.  
> Besides, things were getting a bit heavy in the car, so I think Darcy and Tony deserved just a fun day today.


	7. Day 6

**Chicago, IL to Cleveland, OH (5 hours and 31 minutes of road time)**

Tony was driving again.

Darcy had tried to convince him that she should drive for part the day at least, since he’d taken over for the last stretch of her day yesterday, but Tony wouldn’t hear of it. “Besides,” he’d joked, “I kind of like you owing me.”

From anyone else, it might have worried Darcy. But never from Tony. Tony, who had given her so much already, from friendship to the brand new laptop carefully packed into her backpack, and asked for nothing in return. Who didn’t even seem to contemplate that she might _ever_ owe him something in return.

The drive from Chicago to Cleveland was one of their shorter ones, so Tony had happily gone along with Darcy’s suggestion that they follow the signs for _The Biggest Flea Market in the State_ (where Tony had held his nose up and generally projected his discomfort and disapproval while Darcy bartered for some décor for her dorm and a pile of books that Tony wasn’t entirely sure wouldn’t just disintegrate if Darcy tried to crack open).

Then there’d been a sign for a farmer’s market and Tony had followed it before Darcy had even opened her mouth to suggest it. It _had_ almost been lunchtime, anyway.

Tony’s willingness to add extra stops and stretch out the drive had nothing to do with the fact that, once they reached Cleveland, they’d just be one day’s drive from Culver.

He was certainly not trying to put off the end of their trip by just a tiny bit more. Not at all.

But maybe Tony wasn’t alone in the sentiment, because when they were an hour from Cleveland and JARVIS suggested a couple hotels that would leave them close to their route to Culver for the next day, Darcy hesitated.

“Right. Or… I was thinking…” She wrung her hands together, absentmindedly twining her iPod charger cord around her fingers. “We could add an extra stop to the trip? Washington DC’s kind of in the way and it's just about 6 hours from here, and I’ve never been, and, I mean, I’m thinking of studying political science. I’m pretty sure it’s against the rules to study politics if you’ve never been to DC. Especially if your school’s in Virginia.”

Tony raised his eyebrows at Darcy and looked at her out the corner of his eye, his whole face voicing his incredulity.

“We don’t have to!” Darcy quickly backpedaled. “It was just a thought.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to, kid. But your parents are expecting us tomorrow evening. And they were not especially happy about my driving out with you. I just don’t think it’s a good idea for me to antagonize them like that.”

Darcy rolled her eyes.

“If you don’t want to do it, that’s fine. But – and don’t tell them I said this – screw what my parents think. I’m an adult. You’re an adult. We’ve been perfectly safe and it’s totally reasonable to add an extra stop to the road trip. We could just tell them we made bad time.”

“You’ve given them updates at each stop,” Tony countered. “And I’m pretty sure they’d freak out even more if it suddenly took us two days to make one day’s drive.”

“Fine, so we say we took a wrong turn. Or we just tell them I wanted to go to DC! And I may have mentioned the possibility to my dad before we left home and he said he’d take care of mom. Come on, Mr. Stark.” And she _pouted_ at him. “Pleeeease?”

Tony filed that bit about her father in the back of his mind. Because Chuck wasn’t as scary as Beatrice, but if Tony had somehow gotten him remotely near his corner, that was definitely interesting and worth thinking on (though, in all likelihood, he’d just agreed because he’d fallen victim to a similar sad puppy look to the one Darcy was deploying against Tony right now).

“What would we even do in DC?” He countered, but he could feel himself already starting to yield. “A kid recognized me in the middle of nowhere South Dakota. There are a lot more people who’ve seen my photo – and who’ve met me in person – in DC. We’d be made as soon as we stepped anywhere near downtown.”

“That’s because we didn’t take any precautions,” Darcy responded, clearly sensing the weakening in his defenses. “And we didn’t have an exit plan. But we can come up with one! And get you a disguise. Come on, it’ll be fun!”

Tony really wanted to say yes. One more look at Darcy, and his resolve crumbled. “Alright, fine. Let’s amend tomorrow’s route, J. New destination: Washington DC.”

Darcy pumped her fist and bounced in her seat.

“So why does your mother hate me anyway?”

Darcy wasn’t fooled by the disinterested tone.

“She doesn’t hate you, Mr. Stark,” she tried to assure him. “She’s just… a bit protective.”

“If looks could kill, I’m pretty sure I’d have been dead ten times over just from the morning before we got on the road.”

“Well, you have to admit you have a bit of a reputation. I’ve told them it’s mostly all BS,” she hurried to add on, lest Tony believe she believed any of it, “but she still figures it has to come from somewhere. And she’s having a really hard time with my leaving home. She hasn’t really come to terms with letting me go.”

“You’re just going to college, not leaving home for good,” Tony rebutted, sounding frustrated. “And I have a hard time imagining your mother ever contemplating your _not_ going to college, so she’s had time to come to terms with it.”

“Right,” Darcy agreed, but there was something tense in her voice that warned Tony to brace himself before she’d said any more words. Because he suddenly knew where this was going. He was an asshole. “She never contemplated my not going to college, except for when she thought I was going to die instead. So you’ll excuse her if she didn’t prepare herself as well as she could have for this day.”

Tony opened his mouth to apologize, but Darcy wasn’t done yet.

“And! And she spent years fighting for me and trying to help me when everything was going wrong for me and she couldn’t defend me or do anything about it. So…” she was on a roll now. “So I know better than you how annoying it can be, but I’m not going to get angry at my mother for having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that I don’t need her to protect me anymore. And I’d appreciate it if you could at least try to be understanding.”

Tony felt properly chastised. Only Darcy and Pepper could make him feel that way these days.

“I’m sorry,” and the words he’d have once fought against weren’t so hard to say to Darcy. “You’re right.”

Darcy deflated a little at his words.

“I’m sorry, too. I _know_ my mom’s a little irrational about you. You don’t deserve it. I’ll talk to her about it, I promise. But you need to understand where she’s coming from. This is all really hard for her, too.”

They drove in silence for a while, while Bruce Springsteen sang in the background about making a home in the American land.

When they arrived at the hotel JARVIS had pointed them to, after they had had dinner, Tony stayed for the first time while Darcy called to check in with her parents.

He watched her, noting the softness around her eyes when she spoke with her father; how she threw her head back and kicked her feet against the floor as laughed, seemingly without a care in the world, when he teased her about running interference with her mom over the new stop in their route; the way her whole body seemed to relax when her mother got on the phone, the tension leaving her body and making her look even younger than usual.

She was eighteen now.

He tried to remember what he’d been like with his parents at that age. He had completed his first two university degrees at that point and was living back in the Stark Mansion. He didn’t know it at the time, but he only had two years left with his parents at that point. Would he have done things differently if he’d known? Would they?

On the phone, Darcy snorted inelegantly at something her mother had said, and Tony’s thoughts circled back, as they often did these days, to his soulmate. He couldn’t change the past but he could damn well do his best to ensure he had no regrets about Darcy in the future.

“Hey, Mr. Stark?” asked, sounding uncertain in the elevator ride up to their rooms.

“What’s up, kid?”

“I was just thinking… I know why my parents were doing it and all, but I _am_ an adult now, and I thought, maybe, if you don’t mind… I’d just call you Tony from now on?”

Tony wasn’t prepared for the little double-step his heart seemed to take at her words. And he couldn’t bear the tentativeness in her eyes as she waited for his response.

“I’d like that, Darcy,” he said, and he really meant it.

Her responding smile was so bright he could still see it behind his eyelids once he went to sleep that night.


	8. Day 7

**Cleveland, OH to Washington, DC (5 hours and 50 minutes of road time)**

“Tony, I’m young, but I wasn’t born yesterday. Everybody’s heard about the prank with the three pigs and there’s no way you pulled it at MIT.”

“We did! J, call Rhodey. He’ll confirm.”

“There’s _no wa_ –“ Darcy’s retort was cut off by the dial tone coming from her GPS. She stared at it in equal parts amazement and confusion, because her GPS was definitely not designed to do that. It hadn’t been designed to provide an interface for an insanely complex AI though, so maybe Darcy should readjust her expectations for her technology, especially when Tony was around.

The dial tone rang a second time, then a third, and before the third tone was over, whoever was on the other end had picked up.

“We need to have words about your ridiculous robot butler _picking up my phone for me_ when you call, Tony I could have been –”

“Hi, Rhodey!” Darcy interrupted, practically tripping over her words in her excitement at meeting Rhodey, even if only over the phone.

There was silence on the other end for a second, then Rhodey spoke again, this time with what was doubtlessly his lieutenant colonel voice. “Who is this and where did you get that phone?”

Tony’s eyes were very wide as he stared at Darcy in clear expectation of her response. He looked like a kid in a candy shop and Darcy, who might have otherwise rolled her eyes at his antics, couldn’t help but smile at his obvious excitement about Darcy meeting his best friend.

“Technically, I’m speaking to you through a GPS, not a phone,” Darcy replied like that was the most natural response in the world. “And I’m Darcy.”

The sound that left Rhodey then was somewhere between a laugh, a squeal, and a cough (though Darcy thought he’d thrown that bit in at the end to cover). “ _Darcy_ Darcy?” he asked, as if repeating her name twice would somehow clarify things for him. “As in… Tony’s Darcy?”

“Last I checked!”

“Holy shi–” he paused, then corrected himself, “shiitake mushrooms.”

“You do know I’m eighteen, not eight, right?” She said it with the same long-suffering voice she used when telling Tony he could stop calling her “kid” any day. At least he didn’t try not to curse around her anymore. It had been hilarious at first, but had gotten old quick.

“Sorry, sorry, but I don’t need Tony coming after me for corrupting _sweet little Darcy_. But anyway, hello, Darcy. Not that I’m complaining, but why are you calling me?”

“Tell her about the thing with the pigs!” Tony demanded, finally integrating himself into the conversation. “She won’t believe me.”

“Hey, Tony,” Rhodey greeted. “What thing with what pigs?”

“The… the thing!” Tony exclaimed like it was self-explanatory. When Rhodey didn’t immediately respond, he groaned. “You know, with the three pigs, numbered 1, 2, and 4?”

“Shit, Tony, you want me to remember what show that was from?” Rhodey whined.

“What show–“ Tony sounded affronted. “No, Rhodey, I want you to tell her about the time _we did that_ at school.”

“Look, Tony, I’ve seen when you’ve so much as caught sight of the neighbors’ pigs,” Darcy interrupted again, “and there is absolutely no way you’ve ever been anywhere near a live pig, let alone handled one.”

“Listen to the girl, Tony. I’d pay good money to see you touching a pig or three. I’d definitely remember if I had seen it. You sure you didn’t just dream it up one of those nights you, you know, drank three whole pots of coffee then collapsed at your lab bench?”

“Lies! Lies and slander! And I am so offended you’d forget our great adventure.”

“Thanks for the confirmation, Rhodey,” Darcy said cheerfully. “How are you doing? I’m so excited to meet you. Tony talks about you _all the time_.”

“That’s an exaggeration,” Tony protested. “I only talk about him when it’s relevant. Which is not frequently. Rarely ever, really.”

“Admit it, Tones, you love me,” Rhodey retaliated in an over-the-top, sappy tone. “And Darcy, if he talks about me anywhere close to how much he does about you, I’m surprised you even have to _ask_ how I’m doing. I don’t think Tony’s talked about anything but you in _years_.”

“I’m going to be honest, Rhodey: I’m pretty sure I could even tell you what type of underwear you wear, if I really thought about it. I think Tony has a bit of a crush on you. And I hope he hasn’t given you that level of detail on me,” and she addressed the last bit directly at Tony, “ _because that would be super creepy._ ”

On the other end of the line, Rhodey cackled.

Tony groaned, play-acting smashing his head against the dashboard in front of him repeatedly. “Why did I think introducing the two of you would be a good idea?”

“Because you love us dearly?” Darcy asked.

“Because no one else will put up with you,” Rhodey teased, at the same time, “and we need strength in numbers.”

“Terrible reasons, both of them,” Tony retorted, shaking his head. “J, remind me never to do this again.”

The chat with Rhodey had been a _hoot_ as he and Tony recalled their time at college, got into arguments over every little thing, and threw each other under the bus at every possible moment.

Darcy laughed so hard she almost cried, and had to pull over to compose herself enough to keep driving a couple times.

Before the call ended, Rhodey made sure to get Darcy’s number and promised to send her his because, in his words, they definitely needed to support each other through their respective friendships with Tony Stark.

Tony crossed his arms across his chest and pouted at that, mumbling about bullies making themselves out to be the victims.

“What was your favorite part of college?” Darcy asked a while later.

“Rhodey,” Tony answered without hesitation or pretense, and after what she’d heard from Tony about Rhodey and the conversation she’d just participated in, Darcy had no doubt.

“Ok, well, say I don’t meet a Rhodey. What else should I be looking forward to?”

“I’m sure you’ll find your Rhodey,” Tony responded, then was quiet for a little while. “You’re so different from me. Your favorite parts will be nothing like mine. I loved being away from home, from my father. I loved feeling like I was in charge of myself.” He chuckled. “You’ll like that last part, actually. But my favorite parts were all… about myself. I hated practically everyone else I had to interact with, save Rhodey.” He looked at her contemplatively, assessing. “I think for you, it’ll be the complete opposite. I think you’ll love the people. You’re so good with them, and I know you love Bonners Ferry, but I don’t think even you realize how lonely you’ve been. You’re going to meet so many people now who are just as brilliant, and driven, and thoughtful, and weird as you. I’m calling that that’ll be your favorite part.”

Darcy was making a face, her mouth all scrunched up, like she was trying to hold in a smile or a frown or any other sort of expression.

“I can’t believe you just called me weird,” she said at last, but there was a whole world behind the words.

“Are you really going to deny it?” Tony asked, reading both the emotion behind her words and her attempt not to dwell on it. Never one to press for an emotional conversation when a more fun one was to be had, Tony was happy to go along with her deflection.

“No. But it’s still rude for you to say it.”

A few hours later, Tony and Darcy called out over the sign for Washington, DC at the same time.

JARVIS split the points between them.


	9. Day 8

**Washington, DC**

Much to Darcy’s surprise, JARVIS did not lead them to a hotel when they arrived in DC, but rather to a large but unassuming house out in the Maryland suburbs.

There were no lights on, and nobody greeted them when Tony pulled out a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked the front door.

Darcy looked around the entrance to the house, mouth slightly agape.

The house was tastefully decorated, and the walls and most surfaces held pictures of what looked like a happy family through the years. Some of the pictures were in black and white, while others could not be older than a year or two, going by the fashion in them.

“What is this place?” Darcy asked at last, when it became evident Tony wasn’t going to say anything.

Tony shrugged a little too casually, walking further into the house. Darcy followed him into a vast kitchen, where he unerringly opened a cabinet, pulled out a couple glasses, and served them both some water. It was clear he was familiar with the place.

“It’s my…” he paused, either searching for the word or unsure if he should use it “aunt’s place. It’s where I stay when I don’t want to–” again, he searched for the word, making a small circle with his wrist as he did so in such a way that Darcy worried he would spill the water onto the pristine counters, “make a fuss.”

Darcy remembered Tony having mentioned an aunt before, when she’d asked what he did during holidays, what he’d done after his parents died. She tried to remember more about her, but Tony hadn’t said much. It had been clear he loved her, though.

“Where is she now?” she finally asked.

Tony downed the water in his glass as if it had been liquor and Darcy instantly regretted the question.

“A facility a few miles from here,” he answered, sounding weary. “She’s in,” he cleared his throat, “the early stages of dementia or Alzheimer’s or something. We’re not quite sure yet. But it was getting dangerous for her to be alone, and none of us is around enough to stay with her. Aunt Peg – she’s the one who… she thought it was for the best.”

Tony said it all matter-of-factly, and turned around to get some more water when he was done. He didn’t fool Darcy, though. She could practically feel how hard this was for him from across the kitchen island.

When Tony turned back around, Darcy had walked around the island and was standing by him. She took the water glass from his hand and set it down on the counter before wrapping her arms around him, giving him a gentle but insisting squeeze.

After a few seconds, Tony wrapped his arms around her as well.

A moment later, he had already pulled away, grabbed the water glass, and returned towards the entry hall where they had left their bags. “This place is huge,” he called over his shoulder. “There’s a guest room you can take right by my usual room. If you wake up before me, feel free to poke around the kitchen, make some coffee or tea or whatever you’d like. We can go out for a real breakfast when we’re both up and about.”

Darcy trailed after him quietly, grabbing her bag and following him up the stairs as he pointed her to his room, her room, and the bathroom.

Tony just waved goodnight to her before retreating into his room, and Darcy didn’t push.

As predicted, Darcy woke up before Tony the next morning.

She texted her parents to check in, showered, and made her bed. Then she went exploring.

She spent a fair amount of time that morning looking through the pictures displayed throughout the house. Among photos of what could only be Tony’s aunt and uncle, sometimes in military uniform, sometimes in civilian clothes, and of their family over the years, Darcy spotted a handful photos of someone who could only be a young Tony, bracketed by a man who looked so much like him he must be Howard and a woman with the same laugh lines around her eyes Darcy could sometimes spot on Tony’s own face.

There were more photos of Tony as he got older. Some with the dark-haired, stern-looking woman she’d concluded was his aunt. Some with other children (and, later, young adults), some with dark hair, others light, who must have been his cousins. Darcy stopped to take a closer look at one of him in what looks like his MIT dorm, looking so young and small next to a taller, slightly older, young black man with a wide smile and an arm thrown over Tony’s shoulder. Darcy had never seen a picture of him before, but she knew this must be Rhodey.

When Darcy had opened a door in the lower level to find a study, she had been unable to pull herself away. She admitted it: she was a bit of a snoop.

On the desk, she had found a black-and-white photo of Tony’s aunt in her youth, radiant in a wedding gown, beside her husband, bearing an expression of sheer joy on his face. Beside it, a color photo of the couple with two of the children Darcy had already spotted on some photos outside. And slightly behind that, in an understated frame, another black-and-white photo, this one of a frail-looking, light-haired man in what looked like an army uniform a few sizes too large. Darcy had seen no other photos of this man throughout the house, and she wondered who he’d been.

But then she heard footsteps on the stairs, so Darcy carefully closed the door to the study behind her and went to meet Tony in the kitchen.

He looked so comfortable here, Darcy noted, in this house that displayed his history on its walls and must hold so many memories in his mind. 

“Sorry, I didn’t make any coffee,” she apologized. She’d looked around, and while there was a bag of coffee grounds in the freezer and sugar in the pantry, there’d been no milk in the fridge, and Darcy did not see the point to coffee without it.

“No worries, kid. I know just the place to go,” Tony assured her.

‘Just the place’ turned out to be a tiny nearby diner that looked straight out of the 1960s, with chrome tables and brightly-colored furniture. A big sign at the entrance informed customers this was a _Cash Only_ establishment, a warning repeated on the menus.

Tony barely even glanced at his menu before putting it down, clearly confident in what he wanted.

Darcy should have been perusing her own menu, but instead she watched Tony, fascinated. He’d donned a baseball cap, worn low across his forehead to help hide his face somewhat, but he looked more relaxed than she’d ever seen him outside the privacy of her home (or the car, over the last few days).

She wondered how often he had come to this diner before, likely with his aunt and his cousins. Darcy had no aunts or uncles, no cousins. To her, family had always been her parents and her two grandfathers, both widowed before she’d been born. She’d never really contemplated how family could be something different for other people.

But she had known that Tony’s relationship with his parents – with his father, especially – had been strained, at best. She’d assumed, from that knowledge, that Tony was not close to his family. She was suddenly faced with the startling realization that she may have been wrong.

When the waiter came by, Darcy blushed fire-engine red and looked down at her menu, ordering the first thing her eyes landed on.

Darcy had had no particular itinerary in mind when she’d suggested the detour to DC. Her primary goal had been simply to spend time with Tony.

She’d contemplated going to the National Archives or to the Museum of American History. Maybe to Natural History Museum, which she’d heard had a room full of butterflies visitors could walk through along with an exhibit of gems that sounded amazing.

In the end, they had a very casual day. After breakfast, Tony suggested a bookstore in Northwest DC that Darcy swore she’d have to return to sooner rather than later. (Tony laughed and promised to take her to The Strand when he showed her New York.)

At Darcy’s insistence, they walked by the White House, then around the mall, and when Darcy suggested a museum, Tony took one deep breath then led them to the Air and Space Museum.

Darcy was so glad she’d let Tony choose the museum. She didn’t think she’d ever enjoyed a museum visit more.

Even though he’d likely been there a hundred times, Tony looked around with a child’s wonder. He led her around, explaining what they were about to see so quickly Darcy wasn’t sure he was even taking any breaths between sentences.

He explained how certain planes and machines worked, or their flaws, and gave her little histories of their creators, their uses, their place in the history of mechanics as well as space exploration.

He pointed out models his father had designed.

He answered her every question – both the serious and the silly ones – with more patience than many of her teachers had ever shown and a smile on his face.

Then, after waiting to make sure the school group that was visiting the museum at the same time had vacated the area he wanted to take her to, Tony showed her the small display of his own creations.

He looked so proud Darcy made him stand in front of the case for a picture.

They ended their day on the floor of Aunt Peg’s living room, eating takeout and watching _October Sky_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love the idea of Peggy having photos of Tony and Rhodey with all her family pictures.


	10. Day 9

**Washington, DC to Culver University, VA (4 hours and 40 minutes of road time)**

Darcy insisted on washing their sheets and towels before leaving Aunt Peg’s house.

Tony rolled his eyes, insisting it would get done sooner or later, that he paid somebody to do it. In return, Darcy raised her eyebrows and sent him a disbelieving look over the rim of her glasses until he sheepishly handed over his sheets. Darcy was no neat freak, but laundry was hardly a difficult chore and just the thought of leaving dirty laundry behind for who knew how long, especially when they were guests in somebody else’s house, sat entirely wrong with her.

With the sheets and towels washed, dried, and folded, and after another delicious breakfast at the nearby diner, Darcy and Tony were back on the road.

But Darcy had been very quiet since they’d gotten on the road. And a quiet Darcy always made Tony nervous.

“What’s up, kid? You look like I just made fun of your stupid iPod. Again.”

With a big, great sigh, Darcy pulled her head away from the window against which she’d been leaning. “Nothing. I’m just thinking.”

“You know, I had sort of gathered as much,” he teased. “What about?”

Darcy shrugged and looked down at her lap and Tony tensed because _oh god, that bad?_

“I’m going to miss you,” she finally said, quiet and sad.

“What?” Whatever he’d been thinking, Tony had not been expecting that.

“After tonight,” Darcy explained. “When you go back to Malibu. I mean, I know we’ll still talk and all that. But I’ll miss you. It’s a bit harder to sneak away to Virginia for the weekend or a birthday than to Idaho.”

Tony was silent for a little while. He couldn’t deny that the thought had occurred to him over the last few months, since Darcy told him she was applying to schools on the East Coast. But Darcy had seemed so confident and excited and gung-ho about Culver that he had thought he was being dramatic.

“I’m going to miss you, too,” and he really meant it. “But you can’t just get rid of me by moving a few states away,” he continued, in a lighter tone. “We’ll still talk all the time. I’ll have JARVIS slowly shift my schedule to reflect the time on the East Coast so you don’t have to worry about the time difference. Oh, and we should come up with a plan so we can watch the last season of Battlestar together. JARVIS, start looking into a good system for simultaneous broadcasts.”

Darcy rolled her eyes at Tony’s exuberance, but she did feel a little better knowing Tony’d been thinking about the greater distance between them, too.

“You promise? Because people say these things – _oh, of course we’ll stay friends after summer camp!_ – then they forget each other before they’ve even made it home. And I’m not saying… I don’t think we’re just going to disappear from each other’s lives. But…” Her voice shook a little, and Tony really wished he had not been driving just then. “You’re my _best friend,_ Tony. And I know that’s kind of pathetic, and that I need some friends my own age and all that, but… But it’s true. You’re my best friend. My days are always better when I get to speak with you and I know everything is going to change now, I _do_ , but I don’t think that will. So you have to promise me that we really will still talk and hang out and everything, even if we’re on opposite sides of the continent and we don’t get to see each other for months.”

Ok, that was it. Tony had been waiting for a sign for a rest stop of some kind, but none were in sight, so he just pulled over onto the shoulder of the road and put on his hazards.

“Darcy, I _promise._ I absolutely, 100%, from the bottom of my heart promise. You’re my best friend, too, and that’s not going to change, ok?” He held out his fist to her, pinky held out, and Darcy mirrored the gesture.

“Rhodey’s going to be heartbroken,” Darcy teased with a watery laugh after they’d shaken on it.

“What, is this MySpace now?” Tony retorted, taking her queue to lighten the mood. “I have to rank my best friends? Fine, then. I take it back. JARVIS is my best friend. You’re my favorite soulmate. Rhodey’s my favorite pain in my ass. That better?”

Darcy’s laugh was more solid now, more real, and Tony smiled tenderly at her.

He wrapped his hand around the back of Darcy’s head, pulling her over slightly before leaning in to place a kiss on her forehead. They stayed in that position for a few seconds, just breathing and enjoying the shared comfort. Finally, Tony pulled away.

“Now, can you open the glove compartment? I put something there for you.” Darcy shot him a quizzical look, but he just raised his eyebrows in a look that said ‘what are you waiting for?’, so she did as he asked. “I was going to wait until we got you to school before I gave you this, but somehow this seems like the ideal moment,” Tony explained as Darcy pulled out a sleek new phone out of the compartment.

“It’s a Starkphone. We’ll be rolling them out in a few months, but I wanted you to have it first. I played around with it, added a few features that won’t be in the market version,” he explained as he showed her how to start it. “For one, it has a direct connection to JARVIS, just like your GPS. And since JARVIS is acting as your network, you should have service just about anywhere, as well as unlimited calling and texting without having to explain to your parents why their phone bill has suddenly shot up.” He paused to let Darcy process his words. “This is a direct line to me, ok? No matter where I am or what I’m doing, JARVIS will get you through to me. And vice versa.”

Darcy was speechless. If she tried to speak she would probably cry, she thought, as she stared down at the phone in her hands, but Tony looked so expectant (and increasingly anxious) that if she didn’t say something, he would probably try to make a joke and take it all back, and she couldn’t let him do that. So she said the only words she could think of just then.

“I love you.”

When she looked up at him, Tony looked like she could knock him over with a feather.

It had been years – maybe a decade – since he’d heard those words addressed at him. He knew Rhodey loved him for some unfathomable reason, but they did not usually speak about their feelings like that. Other than that, the last time he’d heard somebody say those words to him _and mean them_ had probably been from his mother.

Darcy was shifting in her seat, looking uncertain of herself, and Tony couldn’t let that happen. Couldn’t let her even contemplate the possibility of apologizing for her words.

“Thank you. I mean… I…” He stammered over his words, but if it had been a decade since he’d last heard somebody tell him they loved him, it had been that much longer since he’d last said the words.

His love felt dangerous sometimes. Dangerous and insufficient and so big it threatened to drown him if he dared speak the words. He hated himself. Darcy deserved the words. “You, too,” he finally said, quietly and shamefully, and he hoped that could be enough.

And then Darcy’s hand was on his, squeezing it, and there were tears in her eyes but she was smiling brighter than the summer sun in Virginia, and he knew Darcy understood.

Sometimes Darcy understood him better than he did himself.

Their drive to Culver was short – especially since Tony wasn’t going all the way to campus with her. In the midst of the moving-in madness, and especially as Darcy met and introduced her parents to orientation leaders and her new roommate, somebody was bound to notice Tony.

Instead, they met up with Darcy’s parents at their hotel, about a half hour away from the campus.

JARVIS had already arranged for a car for Tony to take back to DC, from where he’d fly back to Malibu, hopefully leaving no trace of his visit to Culver for anybody to look into.

Beatrice was clearly still weary of him, but Chuck smiled at Tony and, when he was saying his goodbyes, he used their handshake to pull Tony in for a hug. Darcy beamed at them.

When it was finally time to say bye to Darcy, Tony felt a knot in his throat. He’d gotten used to seeing her, talking with her every day.

Darcy must have felt something similar, because she was staring at the tops of her bright red chucks, biting the inside corner of her lip again.

“Guess this is it, kid,” Tony finally said, not knowing what else to say.

“For now,” Darcy corrected insistently straight away, her head shooting up so she could meet his eyes.

“For now,” he agreed. “You’ll be so tired of my texting and calling soon you’ll wish it were for longer, though. I have a whole flight during which to keep myself entertained coming up.”

“You know you can’t text mid-flight, Tony,” Darcy rebutted as if she were speaking to a child.

“You can when it’s your plane,” Tony shot back with a cocky smirk, and Darcy smiled despite her eyeroll. “But really, Darce, it’ll be fine. We’re good. And you’re going to have a blast at school.”

Darcy straightened her back and her uncertain look turned to one of resolution. “We are,” she agreed, pulling him in for a hug. “And I am,” she continued as she pulled away. “And it’s going to be totally awesome.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The road trip is over! Long live the road trip!  
> Now on to more shenanigans.  
> 


End file.
